


Disarm

by livii



Category: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 06:37:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2259657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livii/pseuds/livii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She feels her chest tighten, feels sorrow and pain. Oh lord, she wanted to avoid this. She didn't want to feel anymore. But she can't help it. He is so raw and it's infected her, she thinks. Made her real again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disarm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesleepingsatellite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesleepingsatellite/gifts).



> So many thanks to Miss Muppet for beta reading!
> 
> Tags include "implied/referenced suicide" and "implied/referenced character death" to be super careful, but suicide and death are both only referenced in the story as past events, and the deaths are canonical.

They argue. Rita doesn't suffer fools, doesn't pull punches. She knows she's hurting him, but she also knows she can't help herself.

"I just don't know you," Rita says. She is trying to let him into her life but things are not as simple as that. "I don't know you! And _you_ don't know me either. We spent one day together. We had a mission, during a war. That's bloody it."

Bill looks at her - just looks at her, that way he does.

"We drove across France," he says, simply. 

Rita puts her head in her hands, sighs. "I didn't," she whispers. "I didn't even do that."

"I know," Bill says. He gently, so gently, places a hand on her shoulder, and pats her. It's awkward as hell and also maybe the nicest thing anyone has ever done for her.

*

"The first time I met you," Bill says, "you were standing over me, bathed in light. You'd just killed a Mimic. It was my first time out. I understood the Angel of Verdun nickname right away."

Rita shakes her head. "You're so sentimental. How did you ever survive?"

"I didn't," he says bluntly. She winces; of course.

"You didn't either. You got killed the next second, while you were looking at me. Your body landed next to me, eyes still open. It was horrifying."

"Sorry," she says. She knows it's inadequate.

"I didn't know you yet," he says, as if that explains things, and it rather does. It was war.

"When did we first talk, then?" she asks. She doesn't like to ask these things often, but sometimes her curiosity gets the better of her. There's a whole _her_ out there that Bill lived and died with, and she doesn't know that her at all. It makes a contrast to the her that looped that she knows, but Bill doesn't. So many secrets.

"The next time, actually, my first loop," Bill says, and he's smiling to himself. He has no idea how that smile makes her feel, and she is never going to tell him, ever.

"You stole my battery pack," he says. "I saved your ass, and got shot, and you took my pack and left me to die." He's still smiling, though. He doesn't hold it against her; he knows that _is_ her.

"Ever the soldier," she says. But she wonders how he experienced that and still thinks she can climb her way back to being human.

*

Rita is still a soldier, and has work to do. The Mimics are falling apart but those that are left need to be taken out for good. Europe is devastated. The world is reeling and partying in equal amounts. Rita stands tall.

Cage is mustered out of the Army, smooth-talking his exit like days of old, taking advantage of the confusion and chaos. He goes home to America. Rita says she will be in touch.

She isn't. Three weeks later, he's flown back to Europe and is outside her door.

"I don't know you," Rita says. She doesn't even have the memory of that one day. Cage lived it a hundred, a thousand times or more, but she doesn't even have that one day.

Cage shakes his head. "But you _could_ know me, if you wanted to. I understand, Rita. I'm the only one who does, and god -" he breaks off, and Rita is alarmed to see tears in his eyes.

Rita suddenly realizes: this is a concrete way she can help, after everything. She can listen to this man. She can help him come to terms with his loops.

A small part of her recognizes that he can help her, too, but not now. She's not ready for that yet.

"Okay," she says, and his eyes light up and he looks like a hopeful, happy puppy and she laughs, right out loud. The sound is clear and good and she feels a little something inside her again; it feels like a tiny spark of life.

* 

"How many times did we drive across France?" she asks him, suddenly. Bill groans.

"I can't think right now," he says, grabbing her hips to get her moving again. He loves when she's on top: loves looking at her, watching her fuck him, letting her lead him once again. She loves being on top because she loves being in control.

"Seriously," Rita says, but she leans forward and kisses him before he can reply, moves harder and faster, making Bill shout.

"I don't know, exactly," Bill says later, as they are curled up together. It's always one extreme or another for Rita - either she can't stand to be touched, or she wants to be touched everywhere, all the time, and right now their legs are tangled and her hands are in his hair and it's hard to tell where each of them begins and ends.

"It's okay," Rita says, tugging on his hair a little, just a little.

"I loved every time," Bill says softly. 

*

"How many times did you kill yourself?" Rita asks him one night, sitting at the table together, quietly drinking a glass of wine. They both appreciate a certain amount of silence.

Bill startles, spills a bit of his drink.

"Oh," she says, and looks down.

"I gave up a few times," he says. "One time I went to London. I decided not to meet you at all. I was so tired. It felt so pointless. And I had to drown myself that time at the dam. You're not the only one."

Rita looks up from her examination of the table top. "When it first started," she says, "I didn't believe it. No, I _wouldn't_ believe it. I threw myself off a roof. I shot myself. I shot myself again. Then...then I dealt with it."

Bill takes her hand. "I got run over by a truck," he says. "Not on purpose."

Rita laughs then, and she feels a little part of her opening up.

"I got run over by one too. Hurt like a bitch before the reset," she says. "And I ran away once, too."

"How could you not?" Bill says, honestly, openly, and suddenly Rita knows she is safe with this man; that she doesn't have to hide. 

"I'm not a coward," Rita says. "I'm a soldier, and I fought and I died and I tried so fucking hard."

"Of course," he says, and she doesn't need to say anything else, to explain anything else. It's perfect.

*

They're drunk the first time. Too much wine, getting a little silly, and she can't deny that he's an attractive man. He's earnestly telling her some story, trying to draw her out, all smiles and twinkling eyes. But he's lying on the floor looking up at her, propped up on his elbows and Rita's just looking at his biceps rather than listen and decides, what the hell, what the fuck. Why the fuck not. She knows he wants it. Why shouldn't she, too?

"Oh god, Rita," he says after she kisses him hard and slides her body against his. "Oh, god!"

"Shut up," she says, and pushes him over. He complies. The sex is hot and fast and they are a good fit; she's on top and takes what she wants while he is practically slack-jawed with awe.

He pulls her down into his arms after they are done. She's not comfortable with that, and wriggles away until they are just lying side by side, staring at the ceiling.

"Rita," he says again. He repeats it several times.

"Don't mention it," she says. She closes her eyes to go to sleep, tired and uncertain, but pretty sure she doesn't want to move and change things right now. He hesitates a moment, then takes her hand in his as he settles in too, not complaining about being on the floor.

Rita cracks open an eye, stares at him, at their hands. Then she nods, curtly.

In the morning she's somehow got an arm across his chest and his hand is on her bare stomach, her shirt pushed up sometime in the night, and he is snoring softly as she lies there, watching him.

*

They argue. Rita doesn't suffer fools, doesn't pull punches. And sometimes she tries to, wants to hurt him. Push him away, feel pain, she doesn't even know.

"It's not my fault you're - you're obsessed with me," she says. "I know we looped together. But I, me standing here, I didn't."

"You kissed me," Bill says, just about throwing it in her face. "First. Before we died."

"Oh really," she says, her voice dripping with disbelief. "Really."

"Yes," he says, and she notes some real anger in his voice. "You said I was a good man, and you wished you could have gotten to know me better. And then you kissed me, and -"

"Angels sung on high, etcetera, etcetera?" she says. 

But he's shut down; his turn to block her out, to reject her. 

"Hey," she says, a little more gently. 

"Fuck this," he says. "I keep trying and trying, and it's so dumb, because I thought you had let me in, and I thought I could do it again. Thought we could make it work, just because there was that spark before. Just because I wanted it so goddamned much. I'm a fucking idiot."

His words hit Rita hard. She could debate semantics and existence some more, but - 

"Hey," she says again, putting a hand on his shoulder. He looks up at her and she forces herself to meet his gaze, because there is so much hurt there that she can hardly stand it. So much loss. It reminds her too much of herself.

"The first time I put on the mech suit," she says, softly, "I just about fell over my own damn two feet. That thing was ridiculous. But I killed the Alpha Mimic my first time in the field. Just like you."

Bill takes deep breaths, his whole body shuddering.

"Well," she continues, "I probably did a little better. I’d been trained. I kept my cool. And then, I died. And then I kept dying, and I think - I never thought - that I could be normal again. That anyone would want to, or could know me. That I would want to know anyone else."

"Rita," he says, sounding broken and hopeful at the same time. It's so ridiculously hard, she thinks, being a real person, with emotions and dreams and losses. It would be so easy to just walk away. But she reaches out, lets him put his head on her shoulder. 

"I'm trying so fucking hard, Bill," she whispers. 

*

"One time I ran away with Hendrix," she says, almost casually. Bill whips his head up from the map to look at her.

They're driving to a conference, another time for the Angel of Verdun to get up on stage and try to explain the war without explaining anything. Bill had asked to come along - another road trip, he said - and she had agreed, with some reluctance. She was working, still, on being with other people.

"We never talk about Hendrix," Bill says. He sounds a little...afraid? 

"He was in my unit," Rita says. "We enlisted at the same time. We were from neighbouring villages, but didn't know each other before the war."

She risks a glance over at Bill, and he is watching her, a mix of intensity and fear and, she thinks, jealousy playing across his face.

"I never told him about the reset. We had already...we were working on something. Slowly. Before Verdun. Then, he died."

"I'm sorry," Bill says, and there is something in his voice that tells her more than she is able to accept yet.

"No matter how I replayed that damn day, he died. The Mimics let us win at Verdun, I slaughtered hundreds of them, and Hendrix always died. One day, I said to him, I'm deserting. Just getting up and running away before roll call and the dropship. He came with me. We just ran...across fields and ruined towns and only stopped when we couldn't hear the fight any more."

She looks at Bill again, and thanks him with her eyes for his silence, for letting her talk uninterrupted. 

"We made love in a rusted out old car. No. We had sex. That's all it was for him. It was more for me. I had already looped a hundred times. I thought, maybe I could feel something good, for once. I could be with someone again, let them into my world. Maybe I could even pass on the power. Maybe then I could explain."

She shakes her head, laughs. At herself, at the world. Bill gives a nervous chuckle.

"I asked you once if I could give you the power that way," he says. "You, um, you weren't very interested."

"What did I do?" she asks, a genuine smile forming on her lips. She rather likes the answer he usually has for this question.

"You put me back to work, and then you shot me in the head when I broke my legs," Bill says, almost cheerfully. 

Rita smiles. "I'm sorry I don't remember that," she says. "That was probably the best part of my day."

"I think it was," he says, and they both know they're being glib, but she can't talk about Hendrix any more, and when she looks over at Bill, it's clear that he understands exactly.

*

"Can I?" he asks, pausing before leaning in for a kiss. She's just come back from a run, and doesn't always want to be touched afterwards. They usually work out together, but she runs alone - has all her life. 

She's suddenly incredibly irritated. "How long can we live like this? You have to stop being scared of me."

"Just trying to respect you," he says, and it's true, she appreciates his respect more than anything. It's a gift and a blessing, considering what she put up with during the war. But she also knows fear when she sees it, smells it. She stares him down.

"It's just... I waited so long," Bill says. "You're tough - all the way through - but you've got this shell, too. And sometimes I think one wrong move and you'll put it back up. Or else it'll shatter. And I don't get any more second chances."

She feels her chest tighten, feels sorrow and pain. Oh lord, she wanted to avoid this. She didn't want to feel anymore. But she can't help it. He is so raw and it's infected her, she thinks. Made her real again.

"I promise you will," she says. "I promise that I won't shut you out. But you have to know that I'm a real person, not your angel. Don't idolize me. Just..." She can't say the word. He knows what she means, she thinks.

Bill is red in the face, and can't quite seem to talk. "Okay," he says finally, with a catch in his voice.

Rita punches him in the arm, and goes to take a shower. He laughs, open and delighted, behind her.

*

Bill has a drive to live life linearly from now on: orderly and understandable.

Rita can't do it. She tries, oh how she tries. But in a way it reminds her too much of looping. The constancy, the repetitiveness, the levelling up little by little.

The loop can go fuck itself. She is more than the loop, and so she does what she wants, when she wants. She gets a little car and drives fast, through curving mountain roads while Bill holds on tight to the door handle and grins. She learns to fly an airplane, a little two-seater, and Bill learns how to navigate. They go on a road trip across France, and she fucks him in the famous farmhouse, and it's good.

*

"The worst part was the little things," she says one night, lying in bed beside him. 

Bill looks over at her, but she turns her head, so he can't see her face as she talks. 

"Never really knew what to do with myself at the mess tent, for one," she continues. "I trained and worked with Dr. Carter, but I still had to eat. And I'd go in there, and people would strike up the same conversations. And I would look at them and think, you're going to die in a few hours. You're dead. So I would sit somewhere else the next time, by someone who lives, but they would bore me, and was this my life, now? Just pain and boredom and death?"

"How far back did you go?" Bill asks. She thinks, and decides to answer. 

"Oh-five hundred that morning, when I woke up. We deployed in the late evening, in the twilight. It was such a short time, really. Over and over."

"We deployed at six am," Bill says. "But I couldn't sleep the night before, that first time. Shitting my pants at what I was caught up in. So it was always the day before for me, midday, waking up handcuffed. I was always so _tired_."

"Thank you," she says. She is getting braver. She is talking. But she is still in charge.

"Rita, my ears are always open," he replies. She laughs. 

"You're so smooth," she says, turning to look at him. He smiles, cocks an eyebrow. Puts a hand on her breast.

Rita laughs again and reaches in for him, to reach inside him, to let him inside her. It's good.

*

The third time she catches him whistling that tune, Rita snaps.

"What _is_ that?" she asks, exasperated. "You can't whistle, by the way. Totally off-key."

Bill looks up from the vegetables he's chopping for dinner. "Was I whistling?"

"God grant me patience," Rita says, but she smiles.

"I heard it on the radio, and I guess the chorus stuck with me. Oldies station," Bill says, looking a little embarrassed. Rita holds back a laugh, because she knows Bill is sensitive about their age difference, and this is who she is now: someone who tries to be kind when it truly doesn't hurt her to be in any way. Well. About important things.

"It went -" and he starts singing, and it's worse than the whistling - "before you came into my life I missed you so bad, I missed you so, so bad."

There is a limit to everything, and Rita starts laughing her ass off.

"Well," Bill says, trying not to laugh as well, "it kind of fits."

"Deep truths about our existence in terrible old pop songs," Rita says, catching her breath. "Why not?"

"Makes as much sense as anything else," Bill says, and he grabs her by the waist and starts twirling her around while singing again. Rita laughs, and laughs, and feels nothing but the happiness in this moment right here, right now.

*

War is brewing again in Europe, but this time, it's humans. Chinese and Russian forces aren't stopping as they clean up through the continent. 

Rita is called back to active duty, ready for deployment.

"Please," Bill begs, horrified, "please, you don't have to do this any longer. You're a hero, decorated beyond belief. Get out of it."

"I'm a soldier," she says brusquely, as she packs her bags. "I've always been a soldier. I'm not important, this war’s important." She's angry: surely he understands who she is.

"This isn't your fight," Bill says. "You enlisted and you fought to save the world. Bigger stakes. Leave this petty shit to someone else."

"How can you say that," she says, almost hissing. She puts on her jacket and furiously attacks the buttons, her hands shaking. 

"Rita," Bill says, and he is so scared, she can see it all over him. "Rita, you are worth more than this."

It hits her like a ton of bricks, knocks her out. She drops her bags and covers her face with her hands. "Oh god," she says. "I am not."

"Rita, Rita," Bill says, guiding her to a chair to sit down. He sounds terribly alarmed. He kneels beside her. 

"You think I'm worth saving, but I'm not," she says. "The things I've done, after the loops...I'm just not."

Bill takes her hands. "One time, we were at the farmhouse in France. It was the end of the line - I couldn't keep you alive past that point. And you told me it didn't matter, that only the mission mattered. And you went out and got yourself killed."

"And I was right," Rita says. 

"No," Bill says, forcefully. "No, you were scared. You were so scared that I thought you were worth something. You were so scared that I would make you feel something besides fighting and dying."

"You wish," she says. Bill smiles, sadly.

"Rita," he says, "I finished the mission the next time. And yes, the mission was paramount. But I held your hand as you died. You didn't have to die, that time, and you knew it. You saved the world with me, Rita Vrataski, but you were worth saving too."

"It's so hard," she says, and she hates herself for her vulnerability, but she has to get it out. She has to be honest. It's killing her, slowly, all of this. "I lost my humanity. I turned it off. I don't want to feel. I don't want to hurt. I can't do it anymore."

"But that's the point of living," Bill says, "living and feeling and lov-." He cuts himself off before saying the word. "Why did you fight in the first place otherwise? Why did you decide to let me in?" 

Rita calls up her superiors and negotiates a non-frontline role. Later, the politicians sort out the mess. 

"That time, at the farmhouse," Bill says some time after, holding her in the dark, "I told you that I wished I didn't know you - but I did."

"I wish I didn't know you either," she whispers, and kisses him. 

*

"One time my own stupid squadmate shot me. One time a Mimic literally took my head off."

Bill winces. "Jesus."

"I ran out of ammo one time," Rita continues. "That was bad. Started working on my sword the next loop. And packing extra."

"Yeah," says Bill. "Me, second time around, I just worked on knowing how to turn off my safety."

Rita looks at him, stunned. "That first time - you didn't even know how to use the equipment? I mean, I hadn't had any field testing, but I knew the basics from training."

"No," he says, "but I made it through. Well, until I died. Details." 

"Jesus," she says.

"My worst death was probably that first one," he says. "Alpha burned me up."

"Me too," Rita says. 

They look at each other, and Bill pours them each another glass of wine.

"That last time, when I lost the power, you were ready to stab me in the head with a crowbar, or something. Something big and pointy." Bill laughs. "Would have made a change from being shot."

"I'm sorry," Rita says quietly, but Bill just shakes his head. 

"You did your job, Rita. You saved the world," he says.

"I know," she says, "but I'm still sorry. I know what it's like to die, and die, and die. And you never get used to it."

He looks surprised; this is a rare admission of vulnerability, and she knows it. It's one thing to compare their death counts, but it's another to admit that they sucked.

"One time a Mimic literally smothered me," she says, and Bill still has that look in his eyes, but he knows when it's time to move on, and he doesn't say anything. "Like, disgusting Mimic tentacles all over me as I suffocated. There are no words to ever describe that smell."

"Jesus," Bill says. And they drink some more wine.

*

"Shh," Bill says, as she starts to protest. "Just once."

He's come up behind her in the kitchen, carried her off to the bedroom. She's lying on the bed and he's on top of her, taking off her clothes. She laughs a little. It's not that she doesn't want him. 

"Please," he says, and as he slides into her she nods. It's good. But she is always in charge.

This time he pins her down, fucking her hard and steady. She arches and squirms, but he holds tight, doesn't let up. It's so good, and she can't hold back. She may or may not scream. He knows better than to ever mention it if she did.

"Thank you," he says afterwards, but she gives him a look and he shuts up.

"This is a partnership," she says, simply. He stares at her and she thinks she can actually see his heart expanding. This time, instead of scaring her, it feels good - really, really good. She's still in charge. But she isn't alone.

*

They're sitting on the sofa, side by side, just reading the paper, relaxing together on a sunny Sunday morning.

"You'd like this article," Bill says, passing her a folded page. 

"Thank you," she says, genuinely pleased as she starts reading it and finds he does indeed know her interests. She glances over at him.

It's just for a moment, but she catches that look in his eyes again, and she suddenly can't deny it anymore, and doesn't want to.

She puts down her paper, intent on keeping things light. "That look," she says. "You were besotted with me. Are besotted."

Bill snorts. " _Besotted_."

"Well, it's accurate," she says. "Was it that good? Our time together? Is it that good now?"

And there's that look again, and it's a little overwhelming. A lot overwhelming. Quite a bit flattering. Definitely thought-provoking. She feels it from her head to her toes and she doesn't know quite what she feels inside; quite what she _wants_ to feel inside.

"Rita," he says quietly, "I fought for you, I lived for you, I died for you. You are the most incredible woman I have ever met. And…"

Rita pokes him in the shoulder when he doesn't continue. "And?"

"And I love you," he says, in a rush of words. "So much, god, Rita. So much. Rita, we drove across France. Even if you can't, don't love me, I will always love you."

He is staring at her, maintaining eye contact but she sees the tears in them, the wobble of his lips. He is being brave but he is so, so scared. She holds his heart in her hands right this moment, his heart and his life and it's terrifying, but also beautiful. She can choose, here. There is no predestination. She can create her own future. She can choose to cut herself off or she can open herself up, open up into the light.

She takes his hands in hers, grips them hard. She does not blink.

"I know," she says. "I do too."

And, she does.

And, she is still Rita, fighting and falling through time and dying and dying and dying, but she has someone who knows her, who understands her, who loves her. And, it's good.


End file.
